Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Big Rock Candy Mountain Rainbow Moonscape

Dec. 5, 2012

Note:

This is just a small fraction of the
photos – you reallyneed to enlarge them to see the formations and the colors,
the place was incredible!

We went to Waiotapu
(Why-oh-TAH-pooh) today – it means “Sacred Waters” in Maori, and the complex is
the colorful and diverse volcanic/geothermal regions in New Zealand. (The whole region is part of the
volcanic plateau that we went by in the train just about a month ago. The area of volcanic activity stretchesfrom the actual volcanoes in the center all the way through Taupo and Rotorua
and then on into the Bay of Plenty, where there’s a volcanic island.)Anyway, Waiotapu is an area
covered with collapsed craters, cold and boiling pools of mud, water, and
steaming fumaroles. According to
the brochure, we only see a small fraction of the geothermal features. “The area is associated with volcanic
activity dating back about 160,000 years and is located right on the edge of
the largest volcanic caldera within the active Taupo Volcanic Zone.” Yup, that’s where I walked, through the
volcanic caldera. Which isn’t
extinct – no, this is an alive and bubbling and boiling and hissing and
steaming mass of mud and water, all heated by magma way below the surface. Which is just one of the reasons I
never quite believe the status of an extinct volcano.Richard and I started with
the Lady Knox Geyser, named for the daughter of an early governor of the
island. This is a cone built up of
silica and limestone from the water that gushes out – inside, there are hot and
cold water levels that, when the ranger drops in some soap, mix and create the
30 ft high geyser. The ranger
drops in the soap every day at 10:15 AM, so that they can predict when there
will be the eruption and thus stage a show for we tourists. Otherwise, this geyser doesn’t have a
schedule, she just blows when she feels like it.

Then on to the walks – there
are three loops, interlocking, so that one can take a short, medium, or long
walk through the park. I opted for
the longest walk so I could see all three loops – Richard opted to read and nap
rather than wander this geologic minefield in the rain. (He didn’t grow up with a geologist
father, so he isn’t as fascinated by this stuff as I am.)

First there’s the crater
field – creepy collapsed craters, sides full of crystallized minerals that come
up with the steam or boiling mud/water and then adhere to the sides of the
rocks

in bright yellow, red-brown, green.
Each crater has its own underground bubbling and thundering rhythm, with
the heat and the chemicals eating away at the sides and periodically collapsing
further. They all look like
gateways to Hades, and have names like “Devil’s Hole” and “The Inferno.”

Then there are a series of
shallow pools, fed by overflowing water drifting across limestone terraces and
fed by underground springs, each with its own color from minerals that the
boiling water has leached out of the rocks (it’s that hot!). Yellows, pales aqua, green, red-brown,
white – weird and wonderful all in the same large pools, or all one color with
bits of other colors burbling up from underground – and called, of course,
Artist’s Palette.

There’s also the
Champagne Pool, constantly fed by underwater vents so that the water bubbles so
much it seems as if it is effervescent!
One of the strangest parts is that to continue on the trail, we walk
across boardwalks constructed on top of the limestone terraces, with pools of
variegated water on each side – so that it looks like people are walking on top
of the water, with steam rising from every angle. Out on the boardwalk it isn’t as creepy as it sounds, but
from a distance it is very surreal.

Up and down hills and
stairs, walking around corners where the path disappears and there are only “do
not walk here - 100 degree C - HOT” signs, with eroded sandstone cliffs and shallow pools and
terraces where you almost walk on water – the entire place looks like outer
space. Or maybe a movie set of
outer space. I can’t even describe
some of the places, except to say it’s weird and wonderful.

And then there are the
forests – twisted and gnarled trees that look as though they’ve been tortured
into shape by the noxious fumes, dead and dying trees asphyxiated by the
sulphur in the air. There’s
something very eerie about walking through a quiet forest and hearing boiling
and hissing water or mud, and seeing puffs of steam drifting out of the ground
at random intervals. Who knows
what else might appear with that underground bubbling and the streams of steam?

A waterfall of milky white
water flows into a lake of emerald green, mixing into a pale green at its
entrance. Another pool is a lurid
chartreuse, almost putrid in it’s bizarre color.

The ground ranges from
average dirt color to bright raw sienna, yellow ochre, bright yellow sulphur
mounds, and strips of purple (manganese oxide, according to the brochure).

It took two hours to walk
the three loops, in the light rain and with time to try to see everything. Weird, wonderful, unreal.